NorthWest I think that ECP could make the biggest difference in terminals, rather than on the road. Facilities were designed for shorter trains, and the time savings and capacity increase by quickening the time it takes to build the trains of today. What I'd love to see is railroads do is go even further, by using ECP, DPU and train handling helper like an improved LEADER to create trains composed of individual blocks with their own locomotive that could be rapidly connected and split. Running longer trains lowers the number of crew starts and requires fewer meets, running shorter trains more frequently lowers the penalty of missed connections and increases operational flexibility. If it's easy for blocks to be split on and off quickly, you can combine a lot of short trains into longer ones to get the benefits of both. ECP would substantially reduce the time penalty of block swapping, allowing for operating plans sending out an eastbound every hour, with whatever traffic is going that way on it, and traffic that misses the connection sitting for less than an hour, rather than up to 24 hours. I think it would allow shorter corridors to better compete with trucks, particularly if you could simply detach something like an LA-Phoenix block from the back of an LA-Chicago freight with minimal delay to the rest of the traffic headed east.
I think that ECP could make the biggest difference in terminals, rather than on the road.
Facilities were designed for shorter trains, and the time savings and capacity increase by quickening the time it takes to build the trains of today.
What I'd love to see is railroads do is go even further, by using ECP, DPU and train handling helper like an improved LEADER to create trains composed of individual blocks with their own locomotive that could be rapidly connected and split.
Running longer trains lowers the number of crew starts and requires fewer meets, running shorter trains more frequently lowers the penalty of missed connections and increases operational flexibility. If it's easy for blocks to be split on and off quickly, you can combine a lot of short trains into longer ones to get the benefits of both. ECP would substantially reduce the time penalty of block swapping, allowing for operating plans sending out an eastbound every hour, with whatever traffic is going that way on it, and traffic that misses the connection sitting for less than an hour, rather than up to 24 hours.
I think it would allow shorter corridors to better compete with trucks, particularly if you could simply detach something like an LA-Phoenix block from the back of an LA-Chicago freight with minimal delay to the rest of the traffic headed east.
I read once how the ecp system worked in an employee publication. I don't remember if it was a system special instructions or something on the web site. I can't find anything on it now. I save my old SSIs to might have to look through them.
I seem to recall when modifying the consist (picking up or setting out) each car (I think by intial and number) had to be entered or deleted from the consist for the system to properly recognize what cars were in the train. Possibly that could be done by the system downloading a new train list everytime a scheduled work event took place. Unplanned work would still need to be manually updated.
ECP is really something more suitable for unit type trains. Consists that don't change much between origina and destination. Not so much for carload or blocks of carload traffic. Which would fit in with their desire to kill off such business.
Jeff
Euclid Electroliner 1935 The thing that gets me is that there is too much inertia in the RR industry. The Westinghouse Air Brake design is over 100 years old and while it works, it has many flaws that need improvement. How we get there is beyond my "pay grade" but I hope better minds find a way. But technology will hopefully win out. I don't think it will win out in the case of ECP. The industry is simply unable to adopt it because the universal loose car system is wonderfully standardized and the number of cars is so vast. The logistics of a quick chaneover are impossible, and yet the benefits come in too slowly if the changeover is done over a reasonable amount if time, like say 20-30 years. So ECP will have to come by mandate if it is to happen at all. Or maybe Elon Musk can figure something out.
Electroliner 1935 The thing that gets me is that there is too much inertia in the RR industry. The Westinghouse Air Brake design is over 100 years old and while it works, it has many flaws that need improvement. How we get there is beyond my "pay grade" but I hope better minds find a way. But technology will hopefully win out.
I don't think it will win out in the case of ECP. The industry is simply unable to adopt it because the universal loose car system is wonderfully standardized and the number of cars is so vast. The logistics of a quick chaneover are impossible, and yet the benefits come in too slowly if the changeover is done over a reasonable amount if time, like say 20-30 years. So ECP will have to come by mandate if it is to happen at all. Or maybe Elon Musk can figure something out.
The biggest strike against ECP, for my 2 cents worth, is that the system as applied to cars will not meet the maintenance schedule for the current air brakes. 5 years.
The carriers want equipment to NOT REQUIRE ANY MAINTENANCE between FRA required inspection periods. Until ECP can demonstrate reliability approaching that of current air brakes or exceeding it, it will be a no go. That is 5 years in all the weather and customer conditions that rail cars are subject to during any 5 year period.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
[quote "BaltACD"]So! Your proposing that we have train brakes be able to be applied by cell phone from a remote location? [/quote]
NO WAY. With all the hackers out in the world, that would be asking for trouble. And while the garage door opener uses encripted data, it is not as the expression says "A life threatning event" which the traincar braking system failure would be. I was just trying to indicate that technology may be able to overcome the issues previously raised against ECP. I still think that an oil company should buy an entire train set (cars and locomotives) equipped with ECP and put them into captive service. This would require spares and maintenance coverage. I don't know what it would take to motivate such a action except an embargo following a catastopic explosion like the Lac Megatanic one in a US City such as a Chicago Suburb
Electroliner 1935The thing that gets me is that there is too much inertia in the RR industry. The Westinghouse Air Brake design is over 100 years old and while it works, it has many flaws that need improvement. How we get there is beyond my "pay grade" but I hope better minds find a way. But technology will hopefully win out.
Electroliner 1935I called and asked my daughter to retrieve it from my house and express it to me. She went to my house and when the external key pad for the garage door would not cause it to open, called me. I having a new internet connected garage door opener could remotely open the door from my cell phone. Problem solved. And we have been amazed how far we have come from the 40's when people had old party line phones.
So! Your proposing that we have train brakes be able to be applied by cell phone from a remote location?
With everything being web connected anymore, such as having toll collection RF transponders in our cars and cars having Wi-Fi repeaters in them, it seems that this is an issue that is waiting for someone to bite the bullet and do something positive. The thing that gets me is that there is too much inertia in the RR industry. The Westinghouse Air Brake design is over 100 years old and while it works, it has many flaws that need improvement. How we get there is beyond my "pay grade" but I hope better minds find a way. But technology will hopefully win out. I had an experice with technology this week that shows how far so things have come. I am recouperating from surgery up on Washington Island and forgot to bring my check book. I called and asked my daughter to retrieve it from my house and express it to me. She went to my house and when the external key pad for the garage door would not cause it to open, called me. I having a new internet connected garage door opener could remotely open the door from my cell phone. Problem solved. And we have been amazed how far we have come from the 40's when people had old party line phones.
oltmannd tree68 cx500 Equipment issues, negative cost/benefit, or management resistance to innovation; could be any of them. Can't discount management resistance, and equipment issues are usually addressable. That leaves a negative cost/benefit - and I'm waiting to hear the advantages of stopping a routine train in a half mile instead of a mile when they are stopping for a hold-out because the yard is full... Okay. I think think the benefits of ECP more than "better braking". You can raise restricting speed - track conditioins permitting - because the improvement in braking is greater at low speed. You can "bottle" trains during setout and pick ups. No more pumping air time. You can have remote apply/release of hand/parking brake. No more having to walk a cut to apply and release brakes. No more dragging cars with handbrakes set. You can know the status of the train's brakes without having to infer from flow meter and EOT and cab gauges. Fewer UDEs. Fewer train dynamic caused knuckles/derailments. You have a data backbone for employing full-time sensing and detection. Bearings hot/noisy, wheel flat/out of round, ride quality/truck hunting, etc. Trains get out of terminals faster, have fewer problems on the road, get in and out of slower speed sections faster. Equipment utilization improves. Network fluidity improves. Trip speed goes up. Trip reliability goes up. The only problem is that an ECP system that can do all this does not physically exist (yet...)
tree68 cx500 Equipment issues, negative cost/benefit, or management resistance to innovation; could be any of them. Can't discount management resistance, and equipment issues are usually addressable. That leaves a negative cost/benefit - and I'm waiting to hear the advantages of stopping a routine train in a half mile instead of a mile when they are stopping for a hold-out because the yard is full...
cx500 Equipment issues, negative cost/benefit, or management resistance to innovation; could be any of them.
Can't discount management resistance, and equipment issues are usually addressable. That leaves a negative cost/benefit - and I'm waiting to hear the advantages of stopping a routine train in a half mile instead of a mile when they are stopping for a hold-out because the yard is full...
Okay. I think think the benefits of ECP more than "better braking".
You can raise restricting speed - track conditioins permitting - because the improvement in braking is greater at low speed.
You can "bottle" trains during setout and pick ups. No more pumping air time.
You can have remote apply/release of hand/parking brake. No more having to walk a cut to apply and release brakes. No more dragging cars with handbrakes set.
You can know the status of the train's brakes without having to infer from flow meter and EOT and cab gauges.
Fewer UDEs. Fewer train dynamic caused knuckles/derailments.
You have a data backbone for employing full-time sensing and detection. Bearings hot/noisy, wheel flat/out of round, ride quality/truck hunting, etc.
Trains get out of terminals faster, have fewer problems on the road, get in and out of slower speed sections faster. Equipment utilization improves. Network fluidity improves. Trip speed goes up. Trip reliability goes up.
The only problem is that an ECP system that can do all this does not physically exist (yet...)
ECP does not replace air power for braking power - it only replaces, in theory, the control function of air. To believe that the individual car ECP control systems won't have their own issues in actual operation is to believe that the Tooth Fairy is running for President and will win.
I have no idea what the in service tests of ECP highlighted as failure conditions. I have heard man esitmates of the cost of installing ECP on cars - in some case the costs I have heard are nearly as much as it cost to buy the car in the first place.
If ECP installed on individual cars is not compatible with the current standard of air brakes and can at least have train air line compatibility - if set out on line if road for whatever reason it will have to be handled as a car without brakes by other trains with standard air brakes in moving it to a shop location.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
jeffhergert UP was testing ECP also. I was on one of the engines fully equipped for ECP once. I imagine the PTC mandate had a big part in shelving the testing. I would also imagine that since more railroad cars are owned by private owners than railroads, that it wouldn't be just the railroads that might be resistant to a wholesale switch to ECP. Jeff
UP was testing ECP also. I was on one of the engines fully equipped for ECP once. I imagine the PTC mandate had a big part in shelving the testing.
I would also imagine that since more railroad cars are owned by private owners than railroads, that it wouldn't be just the railroads that might be resistant to a wholesale switch to ECP.
A few years ago, I got to see a few pix from NS's ECP test trains. A good number of melted connectors....
Euclid oltmannd Euclid How do the Australian heavy haul ore railroads deal with unreliable ECP connectors? Are they simply more reliable because they are connected and disconnected less frequently when used on their unit trains? What makes a connector unreliable? What type of operator care is required in connecting and disconnecting the cable connectors? What is the exact technique used for connecting and disconnecting the connectors? With unit trains, you don't cut atn couple much. For US, "loose car" service, I think we really need a wireless trainline. Another alternative would be some sort of inductive connection in the glad hands. I believe someone was messing around with this a couple decades ago... With wireless, where would you get the power to operate all the car valves?
oltmannd Euclid How do the Australian heavy haul ore railroads deal with unreliable ECP connectors? Are they simply more reliable because they are connected and disconnected less frequently when used on their unit trains? What makes a connector unreliable? What type of operator care is required in connecting and disconnecting the cable connectors? What is the exact technique used for connecting and disconnecting the connectors? With unit trains, you don't cut atn couple much. For US, "loose car" service, I think we really need a wireless trainline. Another alternative would be some sort of inductive connection in the glad hands. I believe someone was messing around with this a couple decades ago...
Euclid How do the Australian heavy haul ore railroads deal with unreliable ECP connectors? Are they simply more reliable because they are connected and disconnected less frequently when used on their unit trains? What makes a connector unreliable? What type of operator care is required in connecting and disconnecting the cable connectors? What is the exact technique used for connecting and disconnecting the connectors?
With unit trains, you don't cut atn couple much.
For US, "loose car" service, I think we really need a wireless trainline. Another alternative would be some sort of inductive connection in the glad hands. I believe someone was messing around with this a couple decades ago...
With wireless, where would you get the power to operate all the car valves?
On board battery charged by generator built into wheel bearing plus solar.
https://news.timken.com/2004-09-20-Timken-Supplying-Intelligent-Rail-Bearing-Product-for-Federal-Railroad-Administration
https://www.herzog.com/innovation/ballast-unloading-machine-for-new-track-construction/
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
For a time, CPR was testing ECP brakes on one or two unit coal train sets, with a group of GE AC4400s also equipped. That was probably 10-15 years ago now. The trial ECP did not last long. I have no idea as to results and why it ended. Equipment issues, negative cost/benefit, or management resistance to innovation; could be any of them.
OvermodHey Euc, I see you didn't find and read AAR standard S-4210 when I pointed you to it a few years ago. If you had, you wouldn't need to ask connector questions... Looking back in the history of freight-ECP evolution, y'all might find this reference of interest. Note that this is now more than a decade old, and we've had the Sarah years in the intervening time.
Well, as I tried to indicate, I don't think that connectors are as big of a problem as they are said to be. The problem with ECP is not technical. It is that the industry believes the current air brake art is good enough, and does not want to spend the money on ECP.
With all the time that has passed, I think that if there really was a connector problem it would have been solved by now. And if solving it has not been possible, I think there were be a lot of available documentation detailing the problem and what has been done in an attempt to solve it. So where is that documentation?
The industry ignores all of the benefits of ECP, and focuses only on the question of whether EPC can prevent accidents by better stopping performance. Then they say that only 1% of accidents are related to brake failure, so they conclude that problem is so small that any benefit from ECP cannot do much good.
So the industry has its mind made up and the only thing that they have to worry about is a government mandate. They almost got that with the tank cars, but they dodged that bullet. I am sure they feel very lucky because ECP on tank cars would have been the "camel's nose under the tent" of incremental ECP by more mandates.
Euclid oltmannd Euclid How do the Australian heavy haul ore railroads deal with unreliable ECP connectors? Are they simply more reliable because they are connected and disconnected less frequently when used on their unit trains? What makes a connector unreliable? What type of operator care is required in connecting and disconnecting the cable connectors? What is the exact technique used for connecting and disconnecting the connectors? For US, "loose car" service, I think we really need a wireless trainline. Another alternative would be some sort of inductive connection in the glad hands. I believe someone was messing around with this a couple decades ago... With wireless, where would you get the power to operate all the car valves?
oltmannd Euclid How do the Australian heavy haul ore railroads deal with unreliable ECP connectors? Are they simply more reliable because they are connected and disconnected less frequently when used on their unit trains? What makes a connector unreliable? What type of operator care is required in connecting and disconnecting the cable connectors? What is the exact technique used for connecting and disconnecting the connectors? For US, "loose car" service, I think we really need a wireless trainline. Another alternative would be some sort of inductive connection in the glad hands. I believe someone was messing around with this a couple decades ago...
Keep in mind that the 'current' wired trainline connector (which is an industry standard) is said to be robust over a wide range of conditions and carefully wear-tested.
Hey Euc, I see you didn't find and read AAR standard S-4210 when I pointed you to it a few years ago. If you had, you wouldn't need to ask connector questions... Looking back in the history of freight-ECP evolution, y'all might find this reference of interest. Note that this is now more than a decade old, and we've had the Sarah years in the intervening time.
I don't think that the actual connector per se is a particular source of trouble; one of the things I think important is that the 'breakaway' at the equipment junction box needs to be weatherproof after separation, and easily restorable in the field ideally with no tools and people wearing gloves. And perhaps needless to say, that there be plenty of "FRUs" from junction box to connector readily at hand at any time for replacement.
Power to operate the equipment with noncontact trainlines is from the usual range of sources used for powering unconnected equipment: mostly self-power from motion augmented by sunlight. Rather obviously this is not as good a solution as 220V trainlined power. Note the recent disaster caused by witless programming of the ECP controllers, where conserving battery power was more important than conserving the train.
I think a better place to locate the inductive intercar connection is on the coupler, rather than the gladhands, for a variety of reasons. I thought long and hard about actually running meaningful power through the gladhands at one point (having grown up with Electrolux vacuums and then having read about the GE "point contact" streetcar system switching methods of the early 20th Century) but there are too many potential (pun intended) pitfalls once you get a few years of typical railroad 'attention' on them.
In my opinion, you will have a reliable DPU wireless connection long before you have a reliable as-encountered-in-interchange wireless trainline. There are too many ways it can hard and soft fail, in every case forcing a decision about whether to make the train stop, perhaps as fast as possible, with every failure, or whether to ignore glitches that may cause disaster without further warning.
The approach I was using has a different set of (redundant) transponder equipment at each end of each car (they are associated with the truck instrumentation at each end) and during initialization they automatically determine both the actual consist and the direction each car is facing/moving. Actual wireless radio transmission backs this up, and the logic in the car controllers distinguishes the two modalities. It's a lot of fun, and I mean a lotta lotta fun, to design modulations that are resistant to likely hacking strategies and transient environmental conditions. Hint: the correct solution, as with PTC, involves several interlocking AI systems.
BaltACDAnd on bulk commodity cars in winter - don't overlook the means used to heat the commodity so that it will flow from the car. Open flame is not unheard of.
open flame, thaw sheds, steam lines, rotary dumps - list keeps growing.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.
zugmannYou need electronic devices that can withstand brutal cold, brutal heat, getting soaked, getting frozen, getting covered in grain/limestone/potash/whatever dust, being slammed around in a hump yard or industry, and be made of things (or completely inaccessible) so vandals/druggies/thieves won't want to destroy or steal, be easily servicable, and last more than a few weeks at a shot. Is that all? I don't think it's pure connicdence that railcars have stayed so low tech for so long.
Is that all?
I don't think it's pure connicdence that railcars have stayed so low tech for so long.
And on bulk commodity cars in winter - don't overlook the means used to heat the commodity so that it will flow from the car. Open flame is not unheard of.
You need electronic devices that can withstand brutal cold, brutal heat, getting soaked, getting frozen, getting covered in grain/limestone/potash/whatever dust, being slammed around in a hump yard or industry, and be made of things (or completely inaccessible) so vandals/druggies/thieves won't want to destroy or steal, be easily servicable, and last more than a few weeks at a shot.
Also, consider that the Australian ore roads don't have the extremes of weather that North American roads must contend with. Heat, yes, but bitter cold and blowing snow will not be an issue over there.
EuclidHow do the Australian heavy haul ore railroads deal with unreliable ECP connectors? Are they simply more reliable because they are connected and disconnected less frequently when used on their unit trains? What makes a connector unreliable? What type of operator care is required in connecting and disconnecting the cable connectors? What is the exact technique used for connecting and disconnecting the connectors?
I believe the supposed technical problems and suggestions that ECP is not adequately reliable are being exaggerated by the industry in order to push back against the prospect of a government mandate. If the connectors are unreliable, then make them more reliable. These issues are always presented as being showstoppers for ECP adoption.
The problem with ECP is that it is an all or nothing proposition requiring the spending of a gigantic amount of money to install and maintain ECP before learning how much actual benefit comes out of it when applied to loose car railroading.
How do the Australian heavy haul ore railroads deal with unreliable ECP connectors? Are they simply more reliable because they are connected and disconnected less frequently when used on their unit trains? What makes a connector unreliable? What type of operator care is required in connecting and disconnecting the cable connectors? What is the exact technique used for connecting and disconnecting the connectors? Do the Australian ore railroads get their ECP power from batteries carried on each car?
There were cars, covered and uncovered hoppers/coal gondolas that were being delivered with equipment for ECP operation. They weren't ready, but had some hardware in place to make the addition of ECP easier. I haven't paid attention to the latest new covered hoppers to see if they are still doing this.
jeffhergert I'm not so sure that using the wire for ECP to also control DPs would be much better. It should, but you'll have a connection between every car. Much more places on a 300 car train to have problems. You have to remember that the way most railroads maintain things leaves a lot to be desired. Makes me worry about all the technology being developed. It'll work great when new, but how about a few years down the line? Jeff
I'm not so sure that using the wire for ECP to also control DPs would be much better. It should, but you'll have a connection between every car. Much more places on a 300 car train to have problems.
You have to remember that the way most railroads maintain things leaves a lot to be desired. Makes me worry about all the technology being developed. It'll work great when new, but how about a few years down the line?
I'd be really worried about that many trainline connectors. I really hated that the current ECP tries to push power down the same trainline.
Each car has to have its own power, for starters. Maybe a battery with a generator integral to the roller bearing plus some solar.
For the trainline, I'd hope someone could come up with something like bluetooth, but with some sort of wave guide so that cars would have to be coupled for the communication to take place.
I think there would also have to backward compatibility - an ECP equiped car could operate in an unequipped train - but forward compatibility? I can't see a way to accomplish that.
So, to implement, you'd have to do it in phases. Start with some unit trains, expand to all intermodal equipment, then perhaps ML equipment by pool. Let that stuff run around for a couple of years until you have a chance to get things thorougly de-bugged, then equip the rest of the fleet. Maybe five years start to finish?
Once that is in place, start adding all the "jewelry" to make full use of that data backbone.
But, it has a much better system that the goofy one the RRs have been playing with for a couple decades.
With a wireless bridge to a DPU or EOT you could go right to the fault probably not even have to stop until the next terminal since you have a back-up path.
Aircraft are starting to use Ethernet for this purpose.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avionics_Full-Duplex_Switched_Ethernet
The other thing we discussed on other threads was if you had an electric trainline you could have power or power assisted hand brakes.
Of course I could see all the 'artists' putting down the spray cans becoming copper rats.
Except that if I understand correctly, being a data link, it can tell you how far down the string, it is able to communicate.
ECP is analogus to that 300 light string of Christmas lights, wherein when one fails they all go out. You only have to find the one that failed.
Keep in mind that ECP and PTC are radically different in proven value. There's concrete experience back before the 1920s in electrically-controlled braking, and most -- notice I emphasize most -- of the bugs in North American-appropriate systems were worked out in applications like the mining railroads in Australia. I see little either difficult or misdesigned in the current approaches, with the primary difficulty being the hard connections of the trainlined power/data cable. But I don't think these count as unproven vaporware/betaware provisions.
PTC was from the beginning four separate functions, which really needed different systems to provide them, being rolled into one mandate and then turned loose on techies to build and code. Somewhere along the line the decision was made to provide "it" as overlay to physical signaling systems, which is in practice not only a 'fifth function' but one that substantially complicates both the tech and the maintenance with few if any actual safety or operating benefits. It was bad enough to see a camel being designed by a committee; now we're beginning to see some of the relatively unpatchable holes in the "safety" coverage.
Just think: if we'd passed timely legislation against pedophiles using cell phones improperly, we'd probably not have this mandate this way in the first place...
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